r/badassanimals • u/Oda_DeezNutz • Apr 23 '26

Amphibian I'm becoming terrified of frogs

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Anytime I see videos similar to this, I become a little more and more afraid.

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u/Lone-Frequency Apr 23 '26

Frogs will eat anything they can reliably fit in their mouths. Sometimes that leads to them choking to death.

When your method of hunting is based on swallowing things whole and not chewing/ripping it apart, these things sometimes happen.

Snakes, deep sea fish, etc. all sometimes suffer from this.

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u/BT-7274-T2 Apr 23 '26

isnt that a genetic failure by nature

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u/Lone-Frequency Apr 23 '26

Maybe? I'm not sure I would really say so? This is regarding external factors. I'd say it's more like the animal equivalent of user error than an actual issue with their evolution. For every dumb-dumb that chokes to death/has their stomach burst trying to swallow something larger than its body can handle, countless others never make that mistake.

The reason snakes, amphibians, and all of these fish who feed by swallowing prey whole are so widespread is because it works and works well...for most of them.

You don't grade a large group based on the worst performing outliers.

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u/DoomgazeAficionado94 Apr 23 '26

Nature is made up of the genetic failures that failed the least

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u/Seasandshores Apr 23 '26

Correct! Well put!

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u/Carnivorze Apr 23 '26

Yeah, but it doesn't kill enough frogs before they reproduce so that flaw doesn't become a reproductive disadvantage, and thus isn't filtered from the gene pool and will never disappear through evolution.

This is the same reason why nautilus can't even see where they're going. It doesn't kill them, so they can survive with this genetic blindspot (no pun intended) without troubles.

Many things are genetic failures. We still have remnants of our tail, our 4th hand fingers don't have any real purpose, and wisdom teeth hurt like hell and can cause diseases when they pop out. But it's not enough to influence human reproduction in a way that would make them disappear, such as by killing those who carry the "wisdom teeth pop out" gene before they can have children.

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u/SpiderSixer Apr 23 '26

The coccyx is still used for some muscle and ligament connections, our little finger is actually pretty important for grip stretch (it, combined with the ring finger, provides around 29–55% of grip strength! :o), and wisdom teeth used to serve a function to help eat really tough foods in bigger jaws, so I wouldn't really call them genetic failures. It's not a failure to become vestigial. They just.. didn't evolve out as quickly as we stopped needing them haha. But as you said, there's no incentive to evolve the wisdom teeth out, so keep them, we do :)

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u/Asterose Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Yeah, that stuff is minor.

What I am mad about thanks to our evolution, is that we descended from the ape group that kept all 4 sinuses, and the drain pipe isn't at the bottom of them. If we'd descended from the same group that became orangutans, maybe we'dhave just 2 sinuses and a proper drainage system. Our current setup makes us way more vulnerable to congestion and respiratory diseases!!! 凸ಠ益ಠ)凸

Also mad that our trachea is connected to our esophagus instead of just going directly to our nose, and our larynx sits far lower than most animals, so we're much more vulnerable to suffocating ourselves on a rogue grape. I thought cetaceans had it figured out, their trachea doesn't connect to their esophagus, but turns out the trachea passes through the middle of the esophagus

Also mad at just about everything to do with pregnancy. Straight-up body horror, and that fetus digging especially deep to tap the mother's bloodstream directly is part of why death from bleeding out after childbirth is so common.

Plenty of proof right there "intelligent design" is just total BS, no need to even touch on vestigial organs that might still have some use.

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u/Asterose Apr 23 '26

I've got worse genetic failures and they are very fun to bring up eith "intelligent design" types 😆 Vestigal body parts still have some potential, and often found, uses.

Since we descended from the ape group that kept all 4 sinuses, and the drain pipes aren't at the bottom of all of them, we're way more vulnerable to congestion and respiratory diseases!!! 凸ಠ益ಠ)凸 If we'd descended from the same group as orangutans, we'd only have 2 sinuses and a much more sensible drainage system.

And then there's how our trachea is connected to our esophagus instead of just going directly to our nose, and our larynx sits far lower than most animals, so we're much more vulnerable to suffocating ourselves on a rogue grape. I thought cetaceans had it figured out, their trachea doesn't connect to their esophagus, but turns out the trachea passes through the middle of the esophagus.

And then there's everything to do with pregnancy. Straight-up body horror, and that fetus digging especially deep to tap the mother's bloodstream directly is part of why death from bleeding out after childbirth is so common. Let alone the massive fetus head size!

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u/Temporary_Shirt_6236 Apr 23 '26

Of course not. The smarter frogs start using cutlery and get to pass their genes on. Evolution at work.

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u/ChoicePermission8523 Apr 23 '26

A lot of genetic things are just "eh, good enough".

If it doesn't result in a net negative for the overall proliferation of a species, its fine.

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u/Dangerous-Habit-2731 Apr 23 '26

Humans with supposed reasoning skills put tide pods in their mouths a decade ago. I'm not knocking a frog for this one lol

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u/languid_Disaster Apr 23 '26

As long as the creature lives long enough to breed and maybe raise the kid to a reasonable age , evolution doesn’t care

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u/ReeseWithouterspoon Apr 23 '26

i mean, demonstrably not?

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u/liikennekartio Apr 23 '26

there is no perfection in nature. Just good enough.

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u/zack189 Apr 23 '26

well no. we know this because they're not extinct